Hot answers tagged accounts
20
AOL was notorious for making account cancellation a terrible task to perform.
Everything in your application should be a joy, including cancellation. Make sure they understand the consequences of actions you can not undo, but make it clear and fun. The moment of cancellation is an opportunity to show the user how awesome you are.
Don't make it hard to ...
12
A soft delete, such as a strike-through in the user name, is the best option for preserving the overall content of the site (like contests and discussions). Deleting some comments out of a thread can make the remaining comments incomprehensible, after all. This option works if it's ok to preserve the fact that such-and-such user once existed in your ...
10
One major advantage of adding permissions rather than removing them is that if you add new features, they are, by default, not permitted to anyone, and you have to make a conscious decision as to who needs this functionality. This can be used to give permissions to a few test users to start with, and then expand it.
It is also very important to give users ...
10
Smashing Magazine published an article about a year ago called Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design. One of the points there (No. 10) was that registration should be optional because:
"customers already have a myriad of user names and passwords to remember and don’t want to create an entirely new account just to buy one or two products from ...
7
First off, those who want to cheat will find a way to do so even if they have to vote in person. All you can do is make it as hard as possible because even with SMS verification people can have multiple mobile numbers, multiple Google Voice numbers, and nearly every GMail account can send & receive SMS with a unique phone number, too.
So the biggest ...
6
From a user experience perspective, I would be frustrated with this restriction. My wife and I share the same credit card accounts and have different user accounts on sites like Amazon for example. I have often purchased things for friends in exchange for cash because they didn't have a card or the credit available. It is a good idea, but in practice could ...
5
Don't differentiate by account. Preferably don't differentiate at all.
Differentiate in tasks/menu's.
Paypal is a good example of having an account to both send and receive money. E-bay probably also allows for both selling and buying. I cannot think of a single marketplace site where you are forced to have separate accounts for what essentially are just ...
5
The simple answer would be to only hold the new address in a pending queue for a limited time. Something like 2 days should suffice. If someone hasn't activated their account within 2 days, it's a fair bet that they aren't going to.
If you do this, you should mention in the activation email that they have 48 hours to activate their account etc.
5
"When users delete their accounts, what should you do with their stuff?"
You should whatever it is you are telling the user you are doing. If I'm on a social media site and there is an option to delete my account, if I choose to do so, I'd expect/want the site to fully delete my account including all content from their DB.
4
If you have users who have required or relevant information attached to them, then the soft-delete approach is almost certainly the best option. Of course it partly depends on why the accounts are deleted, and how unavailable they need to be.
Recursively deleting - because there is information in this heirarchical tree that is probably important - the ...
4
I had a great experience recently ordering Pizza online.
On the home page of the site, I had the option to "Sign In". Since I didn't have a site membership, I just selected "Order Now" instead.
The site allowed me to go through the entire process of selecting pizza and side dishes, entering delivery details and making payment.
After payment was accepted, ...
4
Well I found this interesting article from Luke Wroblewski
https://bagcheck.com/blog/02-design-solutions-for-new-log-in-problems
Essence:
Ideally, there is a nifty way that the "Forget how you signed up, Enter user name: - This is in sync with existing patterns and it looks best to start with.
Next, Step 2 -is what my concern area where on typing ...
4
I think your frequency is good, as long as there's an option to reduce that amount. That's strictly for the frequency, though.
My advice to you would be to NEVER send an email saying "hey, your trial is about to expire!" - this would be a wasted opportunity to take your users through some tasks that may be interesting to them. Tell them about a feature they ...
4
You need separate designs.
There's a key difference in users of the consumer site and the users of your internal site: the internal users are likely to be power users - they'll be doing the same tasks a lot, and they'll get very good at learning whatever interface you give them. End users will spend the vast majority of their time using other sites, so will ...
4
Lots of apps rely simply on a Facebook log in. At this point it's become safe to assume that most people using your site or web app will be using Facebook, so if you're not concerned about users who don't want their account to your site linked to any of their other accounts, go ahead, just use Facebook log in.
However, you should keep in mind that most ...
3
From an application security standpoint, you may want to implement the Principle of Least Privilege where possible. In addition to security benefits, it may also help reduce cognitive load and help users perform their tasks easier without having to figure out which features they do/don't need.
3
When creating an account and confirming an email, don't you send the email address the user gives an email in which they have to click on a link in order to complete the sign up process? If so, add a line saying "if you didn't start this process, click here to remove your email address from our system" which directs the user to a script on your site that ...
3
The thing to remember with Stack Exchange is that an expert in UX is not necessarily an expert in Cooking (to use the two sites from your question).
This means that there is nothing about the UX user (apart from the user entered details) that can be transferred to the new site. Your reputation and badges here have no meaning there.
Therefore the system ...
3
As well as being bad practice, in business terms there's little/no benefit to be had by preventing an unsatisfied customer from terminating their relationship with you. After all, if the user has already reached the decision that he/she wants to delete their account then it's already too late to fix the problem (though it's probably worth including an ...
3
We have found the decision on how to present registration during checkout is dependent on:
How often a typical user visits the site
The type of purchases they make
For example some of our clients prefer not to have registration at all, as a lot of their heavier traffic is seasonal and putting up barriers, or a yet another decision point during the ...
2
One factor to think about is that of the "malicious" or "mischievious" friend. Or, simply, that people change their minds.
I suggest that you give users a way to deactivate their account, but with an escape hatch of some kind - an emailed confirmation link perhaps, or "account deletion will occur in 30 days unless you change your mind".
2
From a user point of view, I still have friends who are scared of using their credit cards online; I usually more than gladly offer my credit card details because I get reward points on my card, so for example on Apple's site my credit card has been used by four different users. Had the restriction existed, the merchant probably wouldn't have had the same ...
2
If I were you I made it optional.
Smashing Magazine's quote sounds me the best way.
You can set their email address as their user name and fill in the
account information with their order details. This way, the customer
isn’t forced to create an account but has an easy way to do so after
completing their purchase. (Remember to explain the benefits ...
2
I would go with providing both options since both of them offer their merits and demerits
Email
Advantages
Its unique and if a person has ownership of an email address and he hasn't registered on your site before, he should be able to sign up without having to think of a unique username
Your password retrieval process becomes simpler because you just ...
2
You should hold on to the accounts as long as possible. Using data from these accounts can help you make better business decisions in the future by analyzing data from it. It can help you improve your product with a very low footprint - as I said in my comment, disk space is cheap, and the account information is not.
With regards to UX, you can reactivate ...
2
Forever, link the inactive accounts to a CLM* program to send the occasional; Hi, we miss you mail and re-activate some users over time.
A hard part of online is getting users in, why remove them when they are finally in. Use it to your advantage!
*(CLM = Customer Lifecycle Management)
Good luck!
2
Well, this is some kind of old approach imo. A while ago username was usually used for two purposes: as identity (to log-on) and as something to display (when you post comments for instance). I believe it came from standalone apps and operation systems, where email is something secondary and username is something primary. Meanwhile it doesn't work in a web, ...
2
I'm going to slightly extrapolate on what dhmholley said regarding knowing your users. While he/she brings up excellent points regarding "casual" users vs. power users and needing to be aware of those differences, I think it is important to keep in mind the shift in the workplace environment as more and more millennials enter the workforce.
The millenials ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
